You Wouldn't Read About It ... But I Did

You sound like a winner to me AJ

I bought a newspaper from a petrol station at the end of my second road-trip last year as I was leaving the town of Goondiwindi, more as a bit of a souvenir to read up on the people who lived out there, than to catch up on world events.

The Finishing Post: Goondiwindi Grey?
When I got home and I found the newspaper amongst all of my other souvenirs from my three weeks away on the road, I read about the young boy pictured the front of the newspaper who was named AJ in the story (Ace? Jack?) and how he had beaten the odds life had thrown at him.

Turned out AJ was born 14 weeks early with heart problems and doctors thought he wouldn't live past being three months old.
He's still not out of the woods yet though, by the sounds of the newspaper article, as he still requires surgery sometime down the track.

On June 22 each year AJ picks out people in Goondiwindi and gives them a carnation.

AJ's heart operation was on the 22nd of June one year, which is why he chooses to hand out carnations on that date, and carnations are the flowers that his parents chose for the funeral of his 

twin brothers who passed away two years before AJ was born.
AJ calls carnations happy flowers, as he believes his brothers are watching over him and he sees the flower as a symbol of life.
That story of AJ's alone was worth buying the newspaper and since I came out to Goondiwindi to see the town's (and my Nan's) favourite racehorse immortalized in stone, while playing my father's old Kenny Rogers album (which I had converted to MP3 for my car's system), the gambling theme was on my mind, especially since there is only two songs on that album that I really like, 'The Gambler' and 'Just Dropped In'.
I have a habit of skipping the rest of the songs on the album when they come on when I'm driving and just repeating the two that I do like.

I like the song 'Just Dropped In', because it is featured in one of my favourite movies, 'The Big Lebowski'.

98,753?
When I was writing this post and realized that AJ could be a winning Blackjack hand of an Ace and a Jack and that the newspaper article mentioned AJ being all heart.

I dug out my pack of playing cards and fished out the Ace and Jack of Hearts to take a photo of for this post.

Number-plates?
Road-trip? 

A Tasmanian letterbox?

I thought it was amusing that the Ace had a picture of car numberplates on it and the Jack featured a letterbox from the state of Tasmania on it, as Goondiwindi was my last motel stop on my road-trip from Brisbane to Tasmania and back, and in Tasmania I had spent four days staying at Wrest Point Casino and winning a bit of pocket money while there.

Wrest Point Casino

Tasmanian Souvenirs and Touchstones

But the thing that I treasured most about picking up this newspaper in Goondiwindi on my second road-trip last year in hindsight was all the things that would resonate on a synchronistic level when I read the paper again after coming home from my third road-trip last year.

The Big Prawn in Ballina

The guy eating a prawn in the Goondiwindi Argus made me laugh, as on all three road-trips I had stopped off in the town of Ballina, home of the big prawn to grab half a kilogram of prawns to eat for dinner.
A plate of shrimp?!
Synchronicities can be intensely personal and mean nothing to anybody else reading that paper, but me.
After my third road-trip and reading the paper again I found many weird little personal winks that would foretell events a little further down the road in my life that year.

Hmm ... what's on my Jack of hearts card again?-)

All of my three road-trips this year revolved around when and where my favourite football team the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks were playing, and on my last road-trip I would stop off at the

Big Banana in the Year of the Monkey only to end that trip by seeing my team be crowned champions in the Year of the Monkey.
Shark Week in the Year of the Monkey

I watched my team beat the Parramatta Eels on my motel room TV on the Saturday night I was in Goondiwindi.

I wrote in the other post about Goondiwindi how the name BREW meant a lot to me personally, and the number 67 is an important number to us Sharks supporters, also.
The Finishing Post: Goondiwindi Grey?
Then I see an advertisement for a shop called 'The Big Lebrewski' in the paper's footy tipping competition page with a 67 in the phone number, not to mention the word BREW.

There certainly would be "Champagne Rugby" for me and the Sharks at the end of the 2016 season.

Even an advert on the front page of the paper had the word "Cellarbrations", the number 67, the year (1967) the Sharks entered the NRL (and hadn't won a final since entering), the number 11, worn by Luke Lewis (who would get "Man of the Match" on the night of the final and I would get to shake hands with on the night) and number 7 (007) my lifepath number.

"Man of the Match" Grand Final night,
#11 Luke Lewis

Me about to shake hands with number 11 Luke Lewis on Grand Final night

Also, I thought it was amusing that there was an ad for a rural supply place with a windmill on it in the top right-hand corner of the front page of the newspaper with the phone number's last three digits being 888.

My Nan had bought me a peddle car when I was young which had a number-plate CY - 888 on the front of it, plus I had written a post about chasing windmills in Tasmania earlier last year -
The Windmills of My Mind

I was glad that I tagged the trip to Goondiwindi on to my Tasmanian trip and relived a few memories of my days at the racetrack with Nan and dad, not that I ever got to see Gunsynd go round the track in my lifetime, but it still brought back memories of going to the races with them and hoping for a win.

The funny thing about the ad in the Goondiwindi paper above was the words "last cowboy standing", as my second and third road-trips would involve the Sharks playing, and beating The North Queensland Cowboys with the last time knocking them out of this year's comp before we took their NRL crown by beating the Melbourne Storm in the grand final the week after.

And I found this Rydges motel advert in the newspaper quite synchy, as I had stayed at Rydges motel in Cronulla on my second road-trip and would stay there the day after the Sharks had become NRL champions for the first time ever.
Happy days indeed.
Though Dad would pass away before I would go on my third and last road-trip in 2016, but his old records that I recorded on to MP3s coming through the speakers of my car stereo would be a sentimental comfort on some lonely roads, and who could ever get sick of hearing 'The Gambler''s good advice just before he broke even?-) 

That's an ace that I can keep.
Maybe I see windmills where there really are none, but the chase had been a rewarding one for me last year and I plan on continuing the chase again this year.

Good advice found on page 17 of The Goondiwindi Argus

Cheers and hit me with another card dealer.